


oh, give me a hand to hold

by meritmut



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Episode 80, F/F, resurrections comma the moment thereof
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-05
Updated: 2017-03-05
Packaged: 2018-09-28 09:11:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 934
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10084385
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/meritmut/pseuds/meritmut
Summary: (give me a hand to hold / so that I may face the cold)Vex falls; Pike reaches. The Raven Queen watches.





	

_No, no, no._

She isn't aware of the words leaving her, spilling from her lips as she staggers to her knees at Vex's side; nor of the way her hands shake, the way they fumble helplessly over leather and fur and armour, over—

Vex—oh, gods, _Vex_.

She's so still, crumpled where she fell in the rust-coloured dirt. Pike reaches out and there’s a single beat before her fingers collide with Vex’s cheek when she fears she'll find her skin cold to the touch but it hasn't been long enough, not here at the heart of the inferno: Vex is gone but the warmth of her remains and that seems the cruellest thing of all—for death to steal her away again and leave her still flushed with life, serene in repose as though she only slept, the imprint of her lingering in the world like the reddish stain of a lone light in a darkened room, swiftly and without warning snuffed out.

_No. No, you’re not going anywhere._

Panic tears through her like wildfire but Pike reaches past it, searches for the fast and fading light of Vex’s spirit and calling for Sarenrae is like turning her face into the sun even when she does so to plead, no pride or shame between her heart and her goddess (not where it matters, and what matters now is _Vex)_ , but in the back of her mind she remembers that it’s another who keeps the keys to this particular threshold. Someone who has already allowed Vex to come back once.

_Please..._

Sarenrae’s light pours from her hands into the void, chases the path between this world and the next and the one to whom her prayer reaches.

(She's there, in the shadows. Pike can't see her but she can feel the weight of that dark presence at her mind's periphery, immanent and inexorable, watching in silence as Vex's dimming light draws nearer and nearer, further and further away from her body with each passing heartbeat.)

Darkness encroaches about the edges of Pike's vision and Vex's spirit is such a faint thing, now. The other side beckons, calling her on into the night and the long silence and still the Raven Queen looks on, immovable, unmoved.

Pike could _scream._

She does, in her head, crying out in the desperate ragged hope that Vex or the goddess will hear her.

_Please. This isn't it, this can't be how it goes._

And then:  _come on, Vex. Not like this, buddy._

The shrouded figure extends a hand, palm raised towards them as though in benediction.

As though to say, _this is far enough._

Pike doesn’t dare breathe.

The world is all shades of red, filled with the sound of her own heartbeat in her ears.

The Raven Queen is not like Sarenrae. She has no pity in her heart: Pike could weep an ocean into being and never move her. But the same is true of malice, and cruelty—she feels neither, and neither could persuade or dissuade her. She simply _is,_ which means that (so long as fate allows, so long as there are years and decades left of the thread tethering Vex to her life and someone willing to do the mending when it breaks before that point, someone willing to throw out a line into lightless waters and draw the lost soul home) hope is not altogether lost.

More vitally, neither is _Vex._

The goddess is standing before them now and her masked form is impenetrable in ways Sarenrae has never been but as Pike’s fingers close around the ember of Vex’s soul, and around her lifeless hands in the red, burning real world, she utters the only thing she can think of to say.

 _We aren’t done yet._ She  _isn't done yet. This isn’t her time, give her back to me—_

Pike thinks of Vax: of what he gave, what he cannot give again.

_—to us._

He lies unconscious not far from here, and that he can’t know any of this is happening is a mercy Pike has no words for because if he did he would try anyway, without hesitating, would fling himself into the night a thousand times over if it meant his sister might open her eyes again.

_Give her **back**._

The Raven Queen's hand lowers to rest on Pike's shoulder. She says nothing, but Pike feels a low warmth begin to spread through her chest and her arm down to the place where her skin and Vex's touch. Her vision blurs as she pours that warmth into the spell, gives it her breath and a little fuel shorn from her own head, and coaxes the spirit into life again.

_Come back now, beautiful._

She presses the lock of hair between their palms, presses her forehead against Vex’s knuckles and her lips against the edge of Vex’s glove. Her heart feels like it's gotten lodged somewhere in her throat, the air in her lungs struggling to squeeze around the lump in her windpipe: numbly, she thinks she might be going into shock.

She wonders distantly if the fight is over yet.

It isn't, not even close, it's only been moments since her knees hit the dirt but time bends around them and it could be hours that pass while the shadows retreat, the weight of otherwordly gazes fading with them and she's left kneeling in this small pocket of silence with Vex half-cradled across her lap, her hair coming loose from its braids spilling over Pike's hands like dark water as she waits, waits, waits.

Waits for the moment Vex breathes again.

**Author's Note:**

> title/lyric from 'funeral bell' by phildel
> 
> tentatively the prologue to something


End file.
